Thomson on "And Two Cows...to My Wife, So Long As She Remains My Widow": Public Policy and Testamentary Marriage Clauses in Canada

Jane Thomson, University of New Brunswick Faculty of Law, is publishing "And Two Cows to my Wife… so Long as she Remains my Widow." Public Policy and Testamentary Marriage Clauses in Canada in volume 103 of the Canadian Bar Review. Here is the abstract.

This article, part one of a two part project, provides a comprehensive review of the law surrounding marriage conditions in wills in Canada, including the civil law jurisdiction of Quebec, through a quantitative study of nearly every electronically reported Canadian decision involving a marriage clause in a will. It begins with an overview of the history of marriage clauses in the UK, the US and Canada with a detailed review of the Canadian jurisprudence. This study reveals that the application of public policy to most marriage clauses in Canadian wills has remained stagnant since the 18 th century, with two notable exceptions. The first involves clauses that condition a gift on discriminatory terms such as the sex, race or religion of a beneficiary's spouse. When asked to do so, Canadian courts have voided such conditions, beginning in the 1960s. The second is the Province of Quebec where arguably all marriage clauses are now contrary to public order. This article is followed by a companion piece that provides the normative argument as to why all marriage clauses should be considered contrary to public policy in Canada.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Gillmer on Pearson v. Pearson: A Story of Slavery, Marriage, and the West, Told in Black and White @GonzagaLaw

Jason Gillmer, Gonzaga University School of Law, has published Pearson v. Pearson: A Story of Slavery, Marriage, and the West, Told in Black and White. Here is the abstract.

This Article is a narrative history of a relationship between a white man named Richard and a Black woman named Laura that started in slavery and ended twenty-seven years later in a trial over whether they were husband and wife. The story follows some of the usual plotlines. Richard purchased Laura at a slave sale and brought her to his home in Missouri; he then married a white woman and they had a daughter together. Within a few years, however, that marriage fell apart, and soon after, Richard allegedly freed Laura and the two of them went to California and built a life together. Twenty years later, after Richard died, Richard’s long-lost daughter brought suit in a California courtroom. She sought to eject Laura from the home she shared with Richard on the theory she, rather than Laura, was Richard’s sole surviving heir and entitled to his large estate. This Article recreates the story of Richard and Laura to offer an intimate glimpse into the complexities of interracial relationships during slavery and the decades that followed. It is built out of the trial transcripts—which until now have remained hidden for 150 years—and relies heavily on the actual words of the lawyers, witnesses, and litigants to shape the narrative. The uniqueness of this approach is also what provides its value. Relying on their words and voices, this Article shines a light on how the parties and the participants saw their world, not on how others saw it for them. Richard and Laura’s story is also noteworthy in that it spans several decades and unfolds over several milestones—slavery, the Gold Rush, and westward expansion—creating the opportunity to expand our understanding of the individual experiences of people involved in Black-white relationships beyond what is typically found in the literature. Hearing about their story, and about the courtroom battle over the legitimacy of their relationship, provides context for why interracial families, even today, continue to suffer from minor indignities and open hostilities simply because they broke the norm.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Sanger on The Rise and Fall of a Reproductive Right: Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization @carolsangernyc @ColumbiaLaw

Carol Sanger, Columbia Law School, has published The Rise and Fall of a Reproductive Right: Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization at 56 Fam. L. Q. 117 (2023). Here is the abstract.

Although the phrase “Post-Roe Era” is still used by those who want to mark the tremendous loss wrought last June by Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, it is only a matter of time before the present state of reproductive constitutionalism solidifies into the more authoritarian “Dobbs Era.” In these early days of transition, states are still figuring out what they want the legal status of abortion to be, ever since Dobbs overruled both Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood of Southeast Pennsylvania v. Casey, returning, in Justice Alito’s words, “the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives.” So, should what was formerly regarded as a medical procedure remain so and be legal? Should it be legal and funded? Or should it migrate from a state’s health regulations to the criminal code and be illegal? Or illegal with exceptions? Or illegal with extraterritorial reach? And who should bear the burden of the illegality? Pregnant women, their physicians, anyone who aids or assists them? Resolving these questions is the pressing task of citizens and lawmakers, as answers are now owed to women of child-bearing age—all sixty-four-and-a-half million of them—so that they can know just where they stand under state law should they confront an unwanted pregnancy. As well as provoking questions of “What next?” the Dobbs case also raises the backwards-looking question of “How did this happen?” How could one live (blithely, it now seems) into one’s adulthood secure in the highest level of legal protection around reproduction, only to have it felled with a few determined strokes from Justice Alito’s pen in the Dobbs case? In this regard, it is worth rewinding the reproductive script to look back over the course of the 20th century, to see how American law developed the concept of constitutionally protected reproductive rights. The legislative trajectory began in the 1920s and progressed in roughly twenty-year increments, ending (certainly for the present) almost 100 years later in 2022 with Dobbs, which shredded the right to abortion by denouncing the underlying doctrine of privacy. In this essay I trace the ways in which a series of constitutional cases reflect both social attitudes and legal constraints on reproductive behavior, whether pro-natal or anti-natal, during the twentieth century. The idea here it to follow their trajectory, beginning with the brutal decision in Buck v. Bell (upholding mandatory sterilization of “imbeciles” in 1927), to Skinner v. Oklahoma (reversing compulsory vasectomy of a prisoner in 1942), and then to Griswold v. Connecticut (striking down a ban on contraceptive access for married couples). These cases contributed to the development of reproductive rights, which by the end of the twentieth century culminated in the right to abortion. Roe v Wade established the abortion right as against state criminal prohibitions (1973), followed by Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992), which upheld abortion’s status as a fundamental right, while seriously expanding the grounds for restricting it. We see Casey at work in two opposing cases, Gonzales v. Carhart (2007), where the Supreme Court upheld a federal ban on a particular abortion procedure and Whole Woman’s Health v Hellerstedt (2016) which struck down burdensome Texas restrictions on abortion. These cases take us to the present, where the rise of reproductive rights has been overtaken by Dobbs, marking an abrupt and decided plunge southward. This plunge leads to a second insight of this Essay. In contrast to nearly all the earlier cases, the analysis in Dobbs does not hold up. The decision lacks the integrity one would expect from a pre-leaked blockbuster that overturned both the law and the vested expectations of citizens for the last fifty years. What truly stings here is how the Court, with its overconfident tone and daring selection of facts, disregards how women and girls have relied upon the holdings in Roe and Casey. There are many ways to critique Dobbs—its theocratic underpinnings, its peculiar historical choices, its doctrinal disregard of precedent, and so on. I focus here on these: first, its disquieting location as the endpoint in the trajectory of its reproductive law cases from the 20th century forward; second, Dobbs’ disregard of women as reproductive agents in the constitutional scheme; and third, its rejection of the developed doctrines of privacy and liberty regarding reproductive practices, an aspect of life that at one time or another envelops most of us. Note: Copyright 2023 American Bar Association. Reproduced by permission. All rights reserved. This information or any portion thereof may not be copied or disseminated in any form or by any means or downloaded or stored in an electronic database or retrieval system without the express written consent of the American Bar Association.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.

Katz on The Fatal Flaw in The Fatal Three: Mary Elizabeth Braddon's Treatment of the Law Relating to Marriage Between a Widower and His Deceased Wife's Sister

Leslie Katz has published The Fatal Flaw in The Fatal Three: Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s Treatment of the Law Relating to Marriage between a Widower and His Deceased Wife’s Sister. Here is the abstract.

After setting out the general legal background and summarising the story so far as it's relevant, the paper explains how an error on Mary Elizabeth Braddon's part relating to the legal effect of illegitimacy sent her novel The Fatal Three off the rails.

Download the article from SSRN at the link. 

Plater on Poisoning, Women, and Murder in 19th Century Australia @Adel_Law_School

David Plater, South Australia Law Reform Institute, University of Adelaide Law School, is publishing 'Assuredly There Never Was Murder More Foul And More Unnatural'? Poisoning, Women And Murder In 19th Century Australia in volume 25 of the Canterbury Law Review (2019). Here is the abstract. 

This article examines crimes committed by women involving the use of poison, notably upon their husbands, in 19th century colonial Australia. It draws on the extensive press archives of the period to determine if the historical and British perceptions and experiences of female poisoners of the 19th century were translated to 19th century Australia. The notion of the supposedly devoted wife stealthily poisoning her unsuspecting husband aroused particular revulsion and was viewed as a threat to social order and as the ultimate betrayal of the female role. Women accused of poisoning their husbands might therefore expect an uphill task within the male dominated criminal justice system of the period in escaping conviction and, if convicted, were unlikely to be regarded with sympathy and as worthy of a grant of mercy. However, this article suggests that the reality in colonial Australia was subtler and more complex than the hostile and often exaggerated perception of female poisoners might indicate. Women accused of capital crimes (including murder) involving poison upon their husbands had every expectation of acquittal and, even if convicted, such offenders were still often regarded with sympathy and might even be spared the “last extremity of the law”. 

The full text is not available from SSRN.

New From UVA Press: Melissa J Ganz: Public Vows: Fictions of Marriage in the English Enlightenment @uvapress

Melissa J. Ganz, Associate Professor of English, Marquette University, has published Public Vows: Fictions of Marriage in the English Enlightenment (University of Virginia, 2019). Here is the abstract.

In eighteenth-century England, the institution of marriage became the subject of heated debates, as clerics, jurists, legislators, philosophers, and social observers began rethinking its contractual foundation. Public Vows argues that these debates shaped English fiction in crucial and previously unrecognized ways and that novels, in turn, played a central role in the debates. Like many legal and social thinkers of their day, novelists such as Daniel Defoe, Samuel Richardson, Frances Burney, Eliza Fenwick, and Amelia Opie imagine marriage as a public institution subject to regulation by church and state rather than a private agreement between two free individuals. Through recurring scenes of infidelity, fraud, and coercion as well as experiments with narrative form, these writers show the practical and ethical problems that result when couples attempt to establish and dissolve unions simply by exchanging consent. Even as novelists seek to shore up the legal regulation of marriage, however, they contest the specific forms that these regulations take. In recovering novelists’ engagements with the nuptial controversies of the Enlightenment, Public Vows challenges longstanding accounts of domestic fiction as contributing to sharp divisions between public and private life and as supporting the traditional, patriarchal family. At the same time, the book counters received views of law and literature, highlighting fiction’s often simultaneous affirmations and critiques of legal authority.

 

Public Vows received the Walker Cowen Memorial Prize, University of Virginia, in 2018.

Bignon and García-Peñalosa on The Toll of Tariffs: Protectionism, Education, and Fertility in Late 19th Century @BignonVincent

Vincent Bignon, Banque de France, Microeconomic Research Unit, and Cecilia Garcia-Peñalosa, Aix-Marseille University, have published The Toll of Tariffs: Protectionism, Education and Fertility in Late 19th Century France, as Banque de France Working Paper No. 690. Here is the abstract.

Vincent Bignon and Cecilia García-Peñalosa examine a novel negative impact of trade tariffs and the costs they induce by documenting how protectionism reversed the long-term improvements in education and the fertility transition that were well under way in late 19th-century France. The Méline tariff, a tariff on cereals introduced in 1892, was a major protectionist shock that shifted relative prices in favor of agriculture and away from industry. In a context in which the latter was more intensive in skills than agriculture, the tariff reduced the relative return to education, which in turn affected parents’ decisions about the quantity and quality of children. They use regional differences in the importance of cereal production in the local economy to estimate the impact of the tariff. Their findings indicate that the tariff reduced enrollment in primary education and increased birthrates and fertility. The magnitude of these effects was substantial. In regions with average shares of employment in cereal production, the tariff offset the (downward) trend in birthrates for 13 years; in those with the highest cereal employment shares, there was a delay of up to 22 years.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Lieberman and Patrick on Disgust, Morality, and the Law @DebLieberman305

Debra Lieberman, University of Miami, and Carlton Patrick, University of Central Florida, have published Objection: Disgust, Morality, and the Law (Chapter 1) as a Chapter in Objection: Disgust, Morality, and the Law, Oxford University Press, 2018. Here is the abstract.

Why do we consider incest wrong, even when it occurs between consenting adults unable to have children? Why are words that gross us out more likely to be deemed "obscene" and denied the protection of the First Amendment? In a world where a gruesome photograph can decisively influence a jury and homosexual behavior is still condemned by some as "unnatural," it is worth asking: is our legal system really governed by the power of reason? Or do we allow a primitive human emotion, disgust, to guide us in our lawmaking? In Objection, psychologists Debra Lieberman and Carlton Patrick examine disgust and its impact on the legal system to show why the things that we find stomach-turning so often become the things that we render unlawful. Shedding light on the evolutionary and psychological origins of disgust, the authors reveal how ancient human intuitions about what is safe to eat or touch, or who would make an advantageous mate, have become co-opted by moral systems designed to condemn behavior and identify groups of people ripe for marginalization. Over time these moral stances have made their way into legal codes, and disgust has thereby served as the impetus for laws against behaviors almost universally held to be "disgusting" (corpse desecration, bestiality) - and as the implicit justification for more controversial prohibitions (homosexuality, use of pornography). Written with a critical eye on current events, Lieberman and Patrick build a case for a more reasoned approach to lawmaking in a system that often confuses "gross" with "wrong."

Download the chapter from SSRN at the link.

Good Dad @washingtonpost

Sonia Rao discusses the emergence of the caring, sensitive father in popular culture, here, for the Washington Post (subscription may be required). 

Mr. and Mrs. Loving

You can once again watch the wonderful Mr. and Mrs. Loving, with Timothy Hutton and Lela Rochon (made for television, 1996), and not available on DVD right now, on Amazon Prime. While Nancy Buirski's Loving and The Loving Story, interpretations of the battle Mildred and Richard Loving fought to overturn the Virginia law against miscegenation are also available, I have a soft spot for the 1996 film and am glad to see it for the first time in a number of years.

I hope it remains on Amazon Prime long enough for my fall class on Law and Society to get a chance to see it. Many of my students would have been five years old or younger when it first aired, and of course wouldn't have been born yet when the U.S. Supreme Court decided the history-making case (1967). Maybe their parents weren't either?

A short bibliography of the movie and the case.

ACLU, Loving: Looking Back at the Landmark Case, Loving v. Virginia

Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967).

Patricia Hruby Powell, Loving Vs. Virginia: A Documentary Novel of the Landmark Civil Rights Case (Chronicle Books, 2017).

Robert A. Pratt, Essay: Crossing the Color Line: A Historical Assessment and Personal Narrative of Loving v. Virginia, 41 Howard L.J. 229 (1997/1998).

Peter Wallenstein, Virginia Hasn't Always Been For Lovers: Interracial Marriage Bans and the Case of Richard and Mildred Loving, 112 The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 440(4) (2004).

Stalk Her Until She Loves You: Abduction As Romance @PopDetective

Via Pop Culture Detective (@PopDetective), a video essay discussing the way pop culture (often film) depicts the relentless way that a man pursues a woman in order to transform her initial dislike into attraction, desire, and ultimately love. Link here to Abduction As Romance. Pop Culture Detective has also posted a related video essay, Stalking For Love, which covers the ways in which pop culture seems to show society seeming to reward a man who won't take a woman's initial "no" for an answer. He continues to follow her and repeat his question, "Will you go out with me?" (or something similar) until he gets the answer he wants. Of course, because he's the "hero" in the situation, society usually excuses such behavior. In addition, the woman who finally (and charmingly) agrees to be wooed can give up responsibility for her actions and her choices. It's an all too comfortable position for many women, even today. It allows men to continue to be aggressive and seductive at the same time, and for women to play the victim and the prize. "Win, win," as they say. Or "second verse, same as the first."

Pop Culture Detective isn't the first pop culture observer to comment on this aberrant message, but these videos are very effective. For more on the "hero male as stalker," see these links.

Julie Beck, Romantic Comedies: When Stalking Has a Happy Ending (The Atlantic)

Radhiga Sanghani, Ten Times Pop Culture Romanticised Sexual Harassment (BBC)

Stalking Is Love (TV Tropes)

Why Is Stalking Romantic In Our Favorite Movies? (AAUW)

But for a contrasting opinion, see Cathy Young, Romantic Comedies Produce Stalkers? That's Laughable (The Observer)

Katz on Family Law as Criminal Law @elizabethdkatz

Elizabeth D. Katz, Stanford Center for Law and History; Harvard University, Department of History, is publishing Family Law as Criminal Law: The Forgotten Criminal Origins of Modern Family Laws and Courts in the University of Chicago Law Review (2019). Here is the abstract.

This Article challenges core understandings about the family law canon, the growth of probation, and the criminal-civil divide by providing the first history of a formative yet forgotten chapter in the development of specialized family courts and child support enforcement. A central tenet in family law scholarship holds that “family law” and “criminal law” are distinct, except in limited or modern circumstances. Scholars suggest this separation results from and reflects fundamental notions about family privacy and state nonintervention. Relying on extensive historical research, this Article radically revises that account by demonstrating that modern support enforcement is rooted in criminal statutes passed around the turn of the twentieth century. Criminal nonsupport prosecutions introduced novel state intervention in family behaviors, and especially marital finances, by assigning newly minted probation officers to reconcile, investigate, and monitor families. Probation officers, in turn, promoted and staffed specialized criminal nonsupport courts — initially called “domestic relations courts” and later “family courts” — that cities first opened in the 1910s. Beginning in the 1930s, perceived disadvantages of criminal law led legislators to strategically relabel family courts and support enforcement as “civil,” even while retaining procedures, personnel, and powers drawn from the criminal approach. Observers found the ongoing use of criminal-derived oversight methods unremarkable; the half-century in which family law was largely criminal law shifted norms about acceptable and desirable state involvement in family relationships. As the number of civil nonsupport suits surpassed prosecutions under criminal statutes, which all states retained, and divorce jurisdiction moved to family courts, family law and courts increasingly appeared civil, obscuring their criminal heritage and continued criminal-law reinforcement. The criminal origins of family courts and support enforcement hold significant implications for the millions of domestic relations cases filed each year, as well as for other types of litigation that blur boundaries between civil and criminal categories. The “civil” label can bring momentous consequences. In a prominent family-related example, Turner v. Rogers, 564 U.S. 431 (2011), the Supreme Court rejected a father’s claim that he was entitled to a public defender, when facing incarceration for a year for nonpayment of child support, on the basis that his imprisonment was for civil contempt. This Article employs history to demonstrate the superficiality of the Court’s holding and to formulate a sounder analysis for future cases in the child support context and beyond.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Johnson on Buggery and Parliament, 1533-2017

Paul Johnson, University of York, has published Buggery and Parliament, 1533-2017. Here is the abstract.

Over nearly five centuries the UK Parliament, and its earlier incarnations, frequently legislated to ensure the regulation and punishment of buggery, a form of sexual conduct once generally accepted to constitute one of the most serious criminal offences known to law. In the early twenty-first century, Parliament abolished the offence of buggery and, subsequently, granted pardons to certain individuals previously convicted of it. Whilst some aspects of the history of Parliament’s approach to buggery are well known – particularly in respect of homosexual law reform – much of this history remains obscure. This article provides an in-depth consideration of the making of statute law in Parliament relating to buggery that reveals the dramatically changing attitudes of legislators towards this aspect of sexual conduct and highlights the significance and importance of the pardons granted to those convicted of the offence.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Adamson on The "Blurred Lines" of Marvin Gaye's "Here, My Dear": Music As a Tortious Act, Divorce Narrative, and First Amendment Totem @seattleulaw

Bryan L. Adamson, Seattle University School of Law, is publishing The 'Blurred Lines' of Marvin Gaye's 'Here, My Dear': Music as a Tortious Act, Divorce Narrative and First Amendment Totem in volume 36 of the Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal (2018). Here is the abstract.

In 1977, singer Marvin Gaye did an audacious thing: Anna Gordy-Gaye was divorcing him, and asking for $1 million dollars. Despite having a wildly successful career up to that point, Marvin was near financial ruin. His attorney, Curtis Shaw, hit upon an idea: Motown, Marvin’s record label, had given him $305,000 as an advance for his upcoming-but-undeveloped album. Marvin would give Anna the $305,000, and pledge the first $295,000 of the royalties yielded from that recording. Instead of $1 million, Anna agreed to the $600,000, as did Motown’s CEO Berry Gordy, Anna’s brother. The judge wrote up an Order to that effect. Composed, written (with a few exceptions), and vocalized by Marvin alone, he first thought to do “nothing heavy, nothing even good.” Then he changed his mind. The album that resulted? A brilliantly unsettling poison pen to and about Anna, sardonically titled Here, My Dear. Released in December 1978, Here, My Dear laid bare to the world a marriage gone terribly, terribly wrong. From the double album’s jacket illustrations and lyrics, down to the vocal colors and tones Marvin deploys — Anna is portrayed as greedy, vengeful and manipulative. The work was so upsetting to her that Anna publicly threatened to sue Marvin. This Article explores that threat. Here, My Dear is a rich legal document from which to mine the myriad torts Marvin commits against Anna over the course of its seventy three minutes and 10 seconds length. Moreover, given Marvin’s persona as one of the most preeminent celebrity male sex symbols from the 1960s until his death in 1984, Here, My Dear can also be read as a beguiling take on the ways in which masculine perspectives on divorce are constructed and articulated. Here, My Dear is a fascinating artifact also because its analysis impels application of some of the Supreme Court’s seminal constitutional jurisprudence such as New York Times v. Sullivan, Gertz v. Welch and Time v. Firestone. Each, in some form or to some extent, is relevant to the Gaye divorce saga as it raises issues of free speech and artistic expression, who can be considered “media” or a “public figure,” and rights of privacy versus newsworthiness of divorce. Consequently, Here, My Dear serves to illustrate foundational communication and distress torts principles as shaped by First Amendment doctrine.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Religious Marriages in the Mediterranean: Mediterranean Institute, University of Malta, March 20-21, 2018: Call For Papers (ends January 31, 2018)

Religious Marriages in the Mediterranean

Venue and date: Mediterranean Institute, University of Malta, 20-21 March 2018

Within Mediterranean settings, religious marriage has functioned for centuries, together with

conversion, as a means both of formal social incorporation and of exclusion of outsiders in

relation to religiously-defined officially-recognised ethnic communities. Such an approach

was an integral part of the Ottoman constitution; aspects of the millet system continue to have

some posthumous existence in states like Lebanon and Cyprus. Over the last century or so,

the development of secular or ‘quasi-secular’ nation-states throughout the region has

generally meant the replacement of religious by civil marriage within state legal systems.

Whether this has occurred via silent absorption or principled exclusion of religious unions, or

even by the creation of dualist systems giving civil marriage pride of place, the juridical

implications have been profound and range from the complete legal marginalisation of

previously dominant religious traditions to the creation of ‘protected zones’ within secular

jurisdictions within which religious law can operate. Everywhere religious courts have been

side-lined and have either been completely eliminated from the formal state’s radar, or

compelled to accept a subordinate position within the state judicial hierarchy. At the same

time, formally secular forms of marriage with religious conceptual roots have had to serve as

important gate-keepers in granting or withholding access to citizenship and legal residence in

states like Greece, Malta or Spain, which have been at the forefront of Mediterranean migrant

flows.

More recently unregistered religious marriages have gone through a revival, proving also to

be a useful vehicle for addressing mismatches between state legislation and the matrimonial

strategies of couples. Thus the Mediterranean, a point of both intersection and mixing where

ideas about the ‘West’ and its ‘other’, are re-produced and transformed, has witnessed how

these transitions resulted in either a tense relationship between marriages regulated by formal,

state laws and religious marriages celebrated according to informal, religious norms, or on

the other end of the spectrum, civil marriages and (certain) religious marriages living

harmoniously side-by-side and at times also being considered synonymous.

This multidisciplinary conference seeks to bring together researchers who have engaged in

research on religious marriages in the Mediterranean. 

Papers may focus on, but are not limited to, one or more of the following themes:

1. Exploring the legal and social interaction between religious and civil marriages in

the Mediterranean, whether contemporary or historical perspective (colonial and

postcolonial).

2. Investigating the non-apparent connections between different religions within and

without marriage legislation (Sunni, Shia, Catholic, Orthodox, Coptic, Jewish,

Hindu…), including papers on mixed marriages.

3. How human/civil rights discourses blend and/or conflict with other forms of

theological, moral and/or customary discourses on religious marriages.

4. Diverse ways of concluding and/or celebrating religious marriages in the

Mediterranean.

5. Problematization and politicization of religious marriages in the Mediterranean.

Organizers:

Ibtisam Sadegh (University of Amsterdam)

David Zammit (University of Malta)

Susan F. Hirsch (George Mason University)

Papers (7,000-8,000 words), will be considered for publication in a special issue of the

international, peer-reviewed Journal of Mediterranean Studies (ISSN: 1016-3476), published

by the Mediterranean Institute, University of Malta and available electronically through

Project Muse.

Upon request, limited travel and accommodation funds (two nights) may be available for

short-listed candidates who cannot apply for funding from their own universities. Please

submit your request for funding with your paper proposal.

Key note speaker:

Annelies Moors, Professor of Anthropology, University of Amsterdam

Deadline for abstract submission: 31 January 2018

Abstracts of 200-300 words are to be submitted via e-mail: i.sadegh@uva.nl with ‘abstract’

and your last name in the subject heading.

Timeline:

31 January 2018: Deadline for abstract submission

10 February 2018: Notification of acceptance

1 March 2018: Deadline for complete draft of paper between 5000 – 8000 words

or a PowerPoint presentation.

20-21 March 2018: Conference hosted by the Mediterranean Institute

1 April 2018: Select participants will be invited to submit papers for consideration for

publication in 2018 in the Journal of Mediterranean Studies

This two-day conference is organized by the University of Malta through the Department of

Civil Law and the Mediterranean Institute research group on Belief, Identity and Exchange in

conjunction with the ERC-funded research project on ‘Problematizing “Muslim Marriages”:

Ambiguities and Contestations’ hosted by the University of Amsterdam.

See http://religionresearch.org/musmar2014/

Kha on the Spectacle of Divorce Law in Evelyn Waugh's A Handful of Dust and A. P. Herbert's Holy Deadlock @tandfonline

Henry Kha has published The Spectacle of Divorce Law in Evelyn Waugh's A Handful of Dust and A. P. Herbert's Holy Deadlock in Law and Literature. Here is the abstract.

The article examines the way Evelyn Waugh's A Handful of Dust (1934) and A. P. Herbert's Holy Deadlock (1934) express popular dissent against the divorce laws of England in the 1930s. These novels satirized the legal process of obtaining a divorce as farcical and tainted by parties colluding to stage “hotel divorces” in order to satisfy the single-fault ground of adultery. This article argues that these novels helped to articulate widespread opposition towards the Matrimonial Causes Act 1857, which only allowed divorce to be granted for adultery alone. The writings also spurred parliamentary debate and ultimately paved the way forward for the introduction of the Matrimonial Causes Act 1937. Herbert played a unique part in the campaign for divorce law reform. Both as a novelist and as a parliamentarian, Herbert composed legal satires and successfully introduced the Divorce Bill into the British Parliament respectively.

The full text is available via subscription. 

Sheryll Cashin's New Book on the Loving v. Virginia Case: Loving: Interracial Intimacy in America and the Threat To White Supremacy @SheryllCashin @GeorgetownLaw

New from Beacon Press: Sheryll Cashin, Loving: Interracial Intimacy in America and the Threat To White Supremacy (2017). Here is a description of the book's contents.

Loving beyond boundaries is a radical act that is changing America. When Mildred and Richard Loving wed in 1958, they were ripped from their shared bed and taken to court. Their crime: miscegenation, punished by exile from their home state of Virginia. The resulting landmark decision of Loving v. Virginia ended bans on interracial marriage and remains a signature case—the first to use the words “white supremacy” to describe such racism. Drawing from the earliest chapters in US history, legal scholar Sheryll Cashin reveals the enduring legacy of America’s original sin, tracing how we transformed from a country without an entrenched construction of race to a nation where one drop of nonwhite blood merited exclusion from full citizenship. In vivid detail, she illustrates how the idea of whiteness was created by the planter class of yesterday and is reinforced by today’s power-hungry dog-whistlers to divide struggling whites and people of color, ensuring plutocracy and undermining the common good. Cashin argues that over the course of the last four centuries there have been “ardent integrators” and that those people are today contributing to the emergence of a class of “culturally dexterous” Americans. In the fifty years since the Lovings won their case, approval for interracial marriage rose from 4 percent to 87 percent. Cashin speculates that rising rates of interracial intimacy—including cross-racial adoption, romance, and friendship—combined with immigration, demographic, and generational change, will create an ascendant coalition of culturally dexterous whites and people of color. Loving is both a history of white supremacy and a hopeful treatise on the future of race relations in America, challenging the notion that trickle-down progressive politics is our only hope for a more inclusive society. Accessible and sharp, Cashin reanimates the possibility of a future where interracial understanding serves as a catalyst of a social revolution ending not in artificial color blindness but in a culture where acceptance and difference are celebrated.

 

Domingo on The Family in Ancient Roman Law

Rafael Domingo, Emory School of Law and University of Navarra, has published The Family in Ancient Roman Law. Here is the abstract.

The family constituted the basic structural framework of Roman society. The Latin term familia means, essentially, household. It can refer to both persons and things It encompasses all persons who are under the power of a single head (the paterfamilias), and, in a broader sense, all relatives connected by blood or marriage. In a still broader sense, the Roman family encompassed all personal property, including slaves and physical objects. Social stratification, sexual inequality, and legal subordination were defining features of the Roman family.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

A New Play About Roe v. Wade Opens In Washington D.C.

Richard Harris writes for Slate about a new play opening in Washington, D.C. that's based on the historic Roe v. Wade decision. The playwright, Lisa Loomer (Girl, Interrupted) had anticipated that when Roe opened, the President would be Hillary Clinton and the political atmosphere would be much more friendly to the work's subject matter. More here.

More about the play and its playwright here (from the New York Times) and here (from Ms. magazine). 

Call For Papers: Special Issue on Law and the Jewish Family, Jewish Law Association Studies

Via Susan Sage Heinzelman:

CFP: Special Issue on Law and the Jewish Family 

For a special issue of Jewish Law Association Studies on the Jewish Family, the editors seeks papers examining law and/or Jewish law on the Jewish family. We will accept papers taking historical, comparative, doctrinal or philosophical perspectives. Please send inquiries and proposals by January 31, 2017 to the editors: Miryam Segal (miryam.segal@qc.cuny.edu) and Harry Fox (harryfox@chass.utoronto.ca). ​